May
11
The Six Winged Seraphim
Icon I just found of the six-winged seraphim.
The Hebrew seraphim 
is the plural form of seraph, meaning fiery or burning. The first known use of the word comes in the Biblical Old Testament once in Isaiah 6:2, 6 –
v2 – Above it stood the seraphim: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.
v3 – And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.
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In his work Celestial Hierarchy St. Psudeo-Dionysius the Areopagite envisions the seraphim as being the rank of angels closest to God.
“The name Seraphim clearly indicates their ceaseless and eternal revolution about Divine Principles, their heat and keenness, the exuberance of their intense, perpetual, tireless activity, and their elevative and energetic assimilation of those below, kindling them and firing them to their own heat, and wholly purifying them by a burning and all- consuming flame; and by the unhidden, unquenchable, changeless, radiant and enlightening power, dispelling and destroying the shadows of darkness” vii
Fresco from the Holy Monastery of Dionisiou, Mt. Athos. Ca. 1545
